I hated Jon M. Chu‘s Crazy Rich Asians, but In The Heights, an adaptation of Lin Manuel Miranda‘s 2005 Tony Award-winnings stage musical, looks good. As in “better than West Side Story” good, mostly because it’s apparently tethered to the here-and-now. (Or at least the recent past.) I never caught the show but it feels like more than the sum of “a hip-hop version of Rent” mixed with “freestyle rap, bodegas and salsa numbers.”

I don’t know about a prediction by Variety‘s Brent Lang and Marc Malkin that In The Heights might become a Best Picture contender, but it’s conceivable. I have this odd little back-of-the-neck feeling that Spielberg’s film might be…off in some way. However beloved by 50-plus types and despite being based upon a classic Shakespeare tragedy, West Side Story is still 63 years old, and the original play and 1961 film versions had dialogue that used the term “daddy-o.”